8/12/2025 – The San Jacinto River Authority (SJRA) will hold a special meeting of its board of directors on Friday, August 15, 2025, at 10 AM. It will be held at the SJRA’s Administration building at 1577 Dam Site Road, Conroe, TX.
Directors will consider one item in executive session – settlement of its lawsuit against the City of Conroe. The dispute concerns Conroe’s Groundwater Reduction Plan contract with the SJRA.
To provide public comment, you must appear in person. However, you can still watch the meeting via the Internet here.
Several years earlier, SJRA developed a Groundwater Reduction Plan to reduce the demands on the Gulf Coast Aquifer system made by a fast growing population in Montgomery County. Growth was depleting aquifers and lowering water levels in wells faster than water was being replaced.
So, SJRA signed contracts with a number of municipalities to help migrate them to surface water. But that required SJRA to build a surface water treatment plant at Lake Conroe. To do that, the SJRA sold bonds totaling $550 million, which it is now trying to repay.
But Conroe and other municipalities balked at the price of SJRA water. And they began pumping cheaper groundwater while disputing evidence of subsidence.
Half-billion dollarSJRA water treatment plant at Lake Conroe Dam
It’s hard to track developments in this case because it has moved back and forth from Montgomery County District Court to the Ninth Judicial Court of Appeals in Beaumont and the Texas Supreme Court several times.
Many of the appeals are on limited aspects of the case. In 2020, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled that Conroe could not invoke governmental immunity against the SJRA. Their ruling provides a good summary of the issues in the case at that time.
Case Still Not Decided in Second Trip to Supreme Court
The litigants later went into mediation. That didn’t produce a settlement, so the parties started appealing various aspects of the arbitration. Eventually, the case circled back around to the Supreme Court of Texas in 2024.
Justice Busby delivered the opinion of the court at that time. In the first paragraph, he signaled judicial impatience. As if speaking to a third party about the SJRA and Conroe, Busby wrote “So far, their taxpayers and ratepayers have been funding only procedural and jurisdictional skirmishes distantly related to the merits of the dispute.”
The Supreme Court sided with SJRA on several limited issues and remanded the case back to the trial court for additional deliberations. Again.
In 2022, various parties owed the SJRA close to $30 million. This is one of those cases where neither side can afford to lose and the lawyers have every incentive to keep it going.
Subsidence Continues as Case Continues
It will be interesting to see what happens Friday.
In the meantime, I’ve spoken to more residents of the Woodlands whose homes and lives are being undermined by subsidence-related faulting. But more on that in a future post.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/12/2025
2905 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/20100405-2016_09_30_AERIAL_SJRA-WTP_26.jpg?fit=1200%2C818&ssl=18181200adminadmin2025-08-12 19:06:562025-08-12 19:16:59SJRA Calls Special Board Meeting to Discuss Settlement of 9-Year-Old Lawsuit
8/11/25 – The correlation between flood damage and flood-mitigation spending by Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) keeps dropping, indicating an increasing influence of other factors, such as race, on spending.
At the end of 2021, the coefficient of correlation between flood-mitigation spending and flood damage was .84. Statisticians consider that a strong correlation.
By the end of Q1 2024, it had dropped to .67, a positive but moderate correlation.
By the end of Q2 2025, it had dropped further to .64.
What is Coefficient of Correlation?
Coefficient of correlation measures the strength of association between two variables, for instance hours spent studying and exam scores.
Statisticians consider a correlation of 1.0 extremely strong. It is the highest possible and means that for every unit of change in one variable, there is a corresponding unit of change in another. As the coefficient decreases, the strength of the relationship also decreases.
Values close to +1 or -1 (e.g., 0.7 to 0.9 or -0.7 to -0.9) indicate a strong relationship.
Values between 0.3 and 0.7 (or -0.3 and -0.7) suggest a moderate relationship.
Values below 0.3 (or -0.3) indicate a weak relationship.
Less than Half of HCFCD Spending Today Explained by Flood Damage
Squaring the coefficient of correlation yields the coefficient of determination. That tells you the proportion of the variance in the dependent variable that’s explained by the independent variable.
Squaring .64 yields 41%. So, flood damage today accounts for less than half of Harris County’s flood-mitigation spending.
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis’ has relentlessly pushed variousprioritization formulas that rely increasingly on race while de-emphasizing damage and flood risk. In fact, his formula now totally ignores flood risk.
The major changes in his formula coincide with the drop in the correlation between flood damage and flood-mitigation spending. The 2022 Prioritization Framework marked the beginning of the huge drop in the correlation.
But in fairness, also understand that special circumstances may apply to investments, such as HCFCD’s Frontier Program. It buys land in developing watersheds for huge, regional detention basins, then sells capacity back to developers. Still…
Notice how the lines in the graph below diverge for some watersheds. Some have proportionally more dollars than damage and vice versa for others. Clearly, politics have skewed spending.
A higher correlation would show the two lines more closely matching each other.Also note that the damage figures include five major floods since 2001. They are extracted from HCFCD Federal Reports.
The watersheds where the two variables most greatly diverge reduce the coefficient of correlation.
Where does your watershed stand in the dollar derby? Do you think you’re getting your fair share?
Here are the actual dollars and damaged structures in a table format. The last column shows the dollars per damaged structure.
Coefficient based on Spending and Damage Columns.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/11/2025
2904 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Corellation-Damage-Dollars.png?fit=2254%2C1354&ssl=113542254adminadmin2025-08-11 22:14:272025-08-12 12:37:00Correlation Between Flood Damage, Mitigation Spending Keeps Dropping
8/10/25 – A reader asked me, “How could the July 4 Guadalupe flood tragedy happen?”
He sent me an article that quoted an associate professor from Syracuse University who studied FEMA’s flood maps. The professor said that people knew Camp Mystic buildings were in the 100-year floodplain. Then she said, “It’s a mystery to me why they weren’t taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk…”
The good professor obviously doesn’t live in Texas. In the endless news coverage of the tragedy, some little known statistics have gone undiscussed. They put the Guadalupe tragedy in a larger context.
We also have 6,258 hospitals, emergency medical services, fire stations, police stations and schools in 1% annual chance floodplains. Camp Mystic is hardly alone.
One in Five Texans Lives in a Floodplain
The Texas State Flood Plan shows that 5,884,100 people live in Texas floodplains (100- and 500-year). The last full census shows that 29,145,505 people live in Texas. That means 20% of the state’s population lives in a floodplain. One in five people!
Only 2% of the people living in the Guadalupe River Basin live in floodplains. But 42% of all the people living in the San Jacinto watershed live in a floodplain.
Column 3 shows people living in 100-year floodplain (1% annual chance) and Column 4 shows the number in the 500-year (.2% annual chance) floodplain.The last column shows percentages of 5,884,100 that totals in the 100+500 column comprise.
And don’t forget, those numbers are all based on pre-Atlas 14 maps. Reportedly, Atlas-14 maps will show floodplains growing 50-100%. And Atlas-15 maps are already in the works. So, the numbers above understate the real dimensions of the problem.
In my opinion, the real question is not “How could the tragedy happen?” It’s “How could it NOT happen?”
Still, the professor raises a valid question.
Problems Don’t Get This Big By Accident
Why do so many Texans live in floodplains? A combination of things has created this perfect storm. Since starting this blog, I’ve written 2,876 articles about flooding. And I see certain recurrent themes:
Collectively, we have a bad case of willful blindness. Regulations don’t keep pace with reality. For instance, Montgomery County still hasn’t adopted updated drainage regulations which have been on the table for years.
People make bad home building and home buying decisions because of antiquated flood maps.
Flooding happens just infrequently enough that when something goes wrong, people can blame it on climate change or God.
Not all of these may apply to the Guadalupe river basin. But I’ve documented them multiple times in the San Jacinto basin. They form a starting point for investigation into the Guadalupe tragedy.
A Problem Too Big To Solve
At this point, in my opinion, the State’s flooding problem is too big to solve. The state flood plan comes with a $54 billion price tag. But we don’t have a dedicated source of funding to address the problems in it.
Worse, collectively we:
Keep kicking the can down the road by making endless plans to solve flooding, but rarely implementing them.
Don’t assume others will protect you. Protect yourself. Start by demanding accurate estimates of risk that we paid for a long time ago. That would at least make people aware of the flood risk they truly face. Then they can decide whether to take that risk.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/10/2025
2903 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240815-Residential-Bldgs-in-1-percent-Floodpolain.jpg?fit=1100%2C833&ssl=18331100adminadmin2025-08-10 15:45:072025-08-10 22:42:37Guadalupe Flood Tragedy: How Could It NOT Happen?
SJRA Calls Special Board Meeting to Discuss Settlement of 9-Year-Old Lawsuit
8/12/2025 – The San Jacinto River Authority (SJRA) will hold a special meeting of its board of directors on Friday, August 15, 2025, at 10 AM. It will be held at the SJRA’s Administration building at 1577 Dam Site Road, Conroe, TX.
Directors will consider one item in executive session – settlement of its lawsuit against the City of Conroe. The dispute concerns Conroe’s Groundwater Reduction Plan contract with the SJRA.
To provide public comment, you must appear in person. However, you can still watch the meeting via the Internet here.
Case Began in 2016
The case began nine years ago in 2016.
Several years earlier, SJRA developed a Groundwater Reduction Plan to reduce the demands on the Gulf Coast Aquifer system made by a fast growing population in Montgomery County. Growth was depleting aquifers and lowering water levels in wells faster than water was being replaced.
So, SJRA signed contracts with a number of municipalities to help migrate them to surface water. But that required SJRA to build a surface water treatment plant at Lake Conroe. To do that, the SJRA sold bonds totaling $550 million, which it is now trying to repay.
But Conroe and other municipalities balked at the price of SJRA water. And they began pumping cheaper groundwater while disputing evidence of subsidence.
It’s hard to track developments in this case because it has moved back and forth from Montgomery County District Court to the Ninth Judicial Court of Appeals in Beaumont and the Texas Supreme Court several times.
Many of the appeals are on limited aspects of the case. In 2020, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled that Conroe could not invoke governmental immunity against the SJRA. Their ruling provides a good summary of the issues in the case at that time.
Case Still Not Decided in Second Trip to Supreme Court
The litigants later went into mediation. That didn’t produce a settlement, so the parties started appealing various aspects of the arbitration. Eventually, the case circled back around to the Supreme Court of Texas in 2024.
Justice Busby delivered the opinion of the court at that time. In the first paragraph, he signaled judicial impatience. As if speaking to a third party about the SJRA and Conroe, Busby wrote “So far, their taxpayers and ratepayers have been funding only procedural and jurisdictional skirmishes distantly related to the merits of the dispute.”
The Supreme Court sided with SJRA on several limited issues and remanded the case back to the trial court for additional deliberations. Again.
In 2022, various parties owed the SJRA close to $30 million. This is one of those cases where neither side can afford to lose and the lawyers have every incentive to keep it going.
Subsidence Continues as Case Continues
It will be interesting to see what happens Friday.
In the meantime, I’ve spoken to more residents of the Woodlands whose homes and lives are being undermined by subsidence-related faulting. But more on that in a future post.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/12/2025
2905 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Correlation Between Flood Damage, Mitigation Spending Keeps Dropping
8/11/25 – The correlation between flood damage and flood-mitigation spending by Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) keeps dropping, indicating an increasing influence of other factors, such as race, on spending.
What is Coefficient of Correlation?
Coefficient of correlation measures the strength of association between two variables, for instance hours spent studying and exam scores.
Statisticians consider a correlation of 1.0 extremely strong. It is the highest possible and means that for every unit of change in one variable, there is a corresponding unit of change in another. As the coefficient decreases, the strength of the relationship also decreases.
Less than Half of HCFCD Spending Today Explained by Flood Damage
Squaring the coefficient of correlation yields the coefficient of determination. That tells you the proportion of the variance in the dependent variable that’s explained by the independent variable.
Squaring .64 yields 41%. So, flood damage today accounts for less than half of Harris County’s flood-mitigation spending.
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis’ has relentlessly pushed various prioritization formulas that rely increasingly on race while de-emphasizing damage and flood risk. In fact, his formula now totally ignores flood risk.
The major changes in his formula coincide with the drop in the correlation between flood damage and flood-mitigation spending. The 2022 Prioritization Framework marked the beginning of the huge drop in the correlation.
But in fairness, also understand that special circumstances may apply to investments, such as HCFCD’s Frontier Program. It buys land in developing watersheds for huge, regional detention basins, then sells capacity back to developers. Still…
Notice how the lines in the graph below diverge for some watersheds. Some have proportionally more dollars than damage and vice versa for others. Clearly, politics have skewed spending.
The watersheds where the two variables most greatly diverge reduce the coefficient of correlation.
Where does your watershed stand in the dollar derby? Do you think you’re getting your fair share?
Here are the actual dollars and damaged structures in a table format. The last column shows the dollars per damaged structure.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/11/2025
2904 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Guadalupe Flood Tragedy: How Could It NOT Happen?
8/10/25 – A reader asked me, “How could the July 4 Guadalupe flood tragedy happen?”
He sent me an article that quoted an associate professor from Syracuse University who studied FEMA’s flood maps. The professor said that people knew Camp Mystic buildings were in the 100-year floodplain. Then she said, “It’s a mystery to me why they weren’t taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk…”
The good professor obviously doesn’t live in Texas. In the endless news coverage of the tragedy, some little known statistics have gone undiscussed. They put the Guadalupe tragedy in a larger context.
We also have 6,258 hospitals, emergency medical services, fire stations, police stations and schools in 1% annual chance floodplains. Camp Mystic is hardly alone.
One in Five Texans Lives in a Floodplain
The Texas State Flood Plan shows that 5,884,100 people live in Texas floodplains (100- and 500-year). The last full census shows that 29,145,505 people live in Texas. That means 20% of the state’s population lives in a floodplain. One in five people!
To put that number in perspective:
And 5,884,100 is more people than live in any American city except New York City. Not even Los Angeles or Chicago has more residents than Texas floodplains.
Only 2% of the people living in the Guadalupe River Basin live in floodplains. But 42% of all the people living in the San Jacinto watershed live in a floodplain.
And don’t forget, those numbers are all based on pre-Atlas 14 maps. Reportedly, Atlas-14 maps will show floodplains growing 50-100%. And Atlas-15 maps are already in the works. So, the numbers above understate the real dimensions of the problem.
In my opinion, the real question is not “How could the tragedy happen?” It’s “How could it NOT happen?”
Still, the professor raises a valid question.
Problems Don’t Get This Big By Accident
Why do so many Texans live in floodplains? A combination of things has created this perfect storm. Since starting this blog, I’ve written 2,876 articles about flooding. And I see certain recurrent themes:
Not all of these may apply to the Guadalupe river basin. But I’ve documented them multiple times in the San Jacinto basin. They form a starting point for investigation into the Guadalupe tragedy.
A Problem Too Big To Solve
At this point, in my opinion, the State’s flooding problem is too big to solve. The state flood plan comes with a $54 billion price tag. But we don’t have a dedicated source of funding to address the problems in it.
Worse, collectively we:
Don’t assume others will protect you. Protect yourself. Start by demanding accurate estimates of risk that we paid for a long time ago. That would at least make people aware of the flood risk they truly face. Then they can decide whether to take that risk.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/10/2025
2903 Days since Hurricane Harvey